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Jessica Bailiff, "Old Things"
Only four full albums into her solo career, Jessica Bailiff has already racked up enough rare and unreleased tracks to put out a compilation that succeed where most fail. It manages to stand on its own as a coherent work of a developing artist rather than a mismatch collection of oddities.
The songs on Old Things show the clear development Bailiff’s career. The newer tracks are a stark set of intimate folk songs, gentle minimal acoustic guitar chords and soft, delicate vocals. The older works, on the other hand, are exercises in fuzzed out guitar drone ecstasy: pure shoegaze the likes of which haven't been heard since Kevin Shields went into seclusion and Pete Kember & Jason Pierce stopped talking. "Crush (version 2)" and "For April" exemplify this perfectly: all slow tambourine percussion and minimal, fuzzy sustained guitar riffs mixed with beautiful angelic vocals. The former also features Low frontman Alan Sparhawk's 12 string electric guitar work that thickens up the sound to even more lush levels. Even more so, the stiff drum machine and lead guitar elements prominent on "Maybe Tomorrow" could be a lost Darklands era Jesus & Mary Chain demo like we were teased with via "On The Wall" and never heard again.
More abstract moments are also evident on the ambient drone "Your Sounds Make Patterns In My Eyes" and the processed guitar and loops of the closing "Figure Eight (For Jonathan)" that are a bit spacier and more abstract. These two tracks bookend the disc in a glorious drone that differs in mood from the boys club of Earth and Sunn O))), but no less compelling. "Helpless" is another of these monolith workouts: a right channel filled with glorious, almost tactile guitar fuzz while the left is soft vocals and percussion before ending with electronics and piano.
There is a very evident leaning towards the minimal throughout this collection, but rather than seeming intentionally Spartan or esoteric, it is more in the home demo DIY sense. The minimal synth lines in "Warren (Home Version)," augmented with repetitive acoustic guitar and just an overall demo sound is like a nice fuzzy blanket of analog warmth on a cold winter's day. Regardless of how to classify it (you probably shouldn’t), Old Things is a compelling, gorgeous listen which is simply too warm, too personal, and too likeable to ignore.
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